DOES ANYONE write creepier villains than Jo Nesbo? Wait a minute, I'm thinking. Still thinking. O.K., the answer is: No, I can't think of anyone who makes my skin crawl like Nesbo. In KNIFE (Knopf, 4SI pp., $27.95), translated from the Norwegian by Ned Smith, a sexual predator named Svein Finne is at large in Oslo. "Finne's driving force is to spread his seed and father children," we learn. "It's his way of gaining eternal life." If he fails to impregnate his victims, he casually kills them. If any of the women should have an abortion, he punishes them in vile ways. And if any of them should bring a child to term, "the Fiance," as he's known, appears in the delivery room to "assist" in the birth. While Finne's intervention at the hospital is disturbing, it provides this weirdo with an ironclad alibi for the killings being investigated by Harry Hole, the rogue police detective in Nesbo's bleak noir series. Harry is at a low point in his unstable life. He's drinking much of the time - to the point of sucking up the last drop of whiskey from a filthy floor - and when his wife leaves him, this time for good, he completely falls apart. But this is what readers expect of Harry, whose weaknesses somehow contribute to his manly appeal. And whenever he does fall flat, there always seems to be a good woman around to pick him up. "He was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot and he had a liver-colored scar running across one side of his face," according to one such woman, upon meeting him for the first time. "But even if his face had something of the same brutality as Svein Finne, there was something that softened it, something that made it almost handsome." In an unexpected move, Nesbo resolves the business of the psycho flaneé rather early in the story, which necessitates the introduction of another slippery killer, as well as a chilling flashback to a military mission in Afghanistan. There's an explicit description of that reliable old method of execution, "drawing and quartering," if that's your thing, plus many other throwaway delights, including a list of the eight categories of killers, of which No. 8 is "just plain bad and angry." They play great music in Ace Atkins's down-home mystery, THE SHAMELESS (Putnam, 446 pp., $27). Fine country tunes like Waylon Jennings's "Rainy Day Woman" ("Woke up this mornin' to the sunshine / It sure as hell looks just like rain"). They also throw superior shindigs, like the annual Good Ole Boy, "a big gathering of every swindler, huckster and elected official in north Mississippi." They're just a little sloppy about observing the laws of the land. A long time ago, the sheriff of Tibbehah County, Miss., ruled Brandon Taylor's death a suicide; but 20 years later, two Brooklynites hope to prove otherwise on their true-crime podcast. The two reporters are bland white bread compared with the hell-raising locals they encounter down South - folks like Old Man Skinner, who thinks it's a fine idea to build a 60-foot cross on the highway, and Fannie Hathcock, whose brothel sign would be hidden by the cross. There's a plot in here somewhere, but it doesn't intrude on the real fun, like catching up with the boys in the barbershop watching "Days of Our Lives." If you think of cozy mysteries as palate cleansers, the body in the WAKE (Morrow/HarperCollins, 219 pp., $25.95) is your kind of book. Katherine Hall Page's latest Faith Fairchild mystery (the 25 th in a long-running series) sends her beloved amateur sleuth on a rare solo vacation to the family's summer cottage in Maine. Her minister husband, Tom, is fine, as are their two grown children, so series fans need not worry. Faith, a professional caterer, plans to relax and help a bit in the kitchen of a friend whose daughter is getting married. (There's a recipe for old-fashioned blueberry buckle at the back of the book that seems easy to make and sounds delicious - except you really need wild Maine blueberries, which are hellish to gather.) Given her sleuthing history, it's not surprising that Faith's detective skills are called on when a body with goth tattoos is found floating in the lily pond. Murder, if murder it is, is a grave business, but the next-door neighbors are committing a more serious crime by cutting down the old-growth pines on their property, which had provided much-needed privacy. In the country, some people would happily fight to the death over such an offense. The question is: Will Faith find the villain in time to save the wedding? DAVID GORDON'S sequel to "The Bouncer," THE HARD STUFF (Mysterious Press, 311 pp., $26), opens with Joe Brody in a car with three strangers, on their way to New Jersey to kill a man. On most work nights, Joe can be found arming the door at a Mafiaowned strip joint, the Club Rendezvous, "talking down drunks, extracting gropers and defusing fights." But when he was in the military, Joe specialized in killing people, and he's managed to hang onto that skill set, which occasionally comes in handy. Like now, when a coalition of mob bosses makes him their unofficial "sheriff" and directs him to make some shady heroin suppliers disappear. For no good reason except the fun of it, that assignment somehow necessitates pulling off a complicated diamond heist. Gordon's quirky characters and offbeat humor take the sting out of some action scenes of horrific violence. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Who is the darkest of them all?" If there was a crime-fiction magic mirror somewhere, and one were to put this query to it, hoping to determine whose novels were the darkest in mood, in theme, and in the protagonist's soul, the answer, almost certainly, would be Jo Nesbø. No one knows darkness like Nesbø's Harry Hole, the Oslo supercop who continually confronts demons both in the external world and every bit as terrifying in his own mind and heart. So it is here, in Nesbø's latest Hole adventure. The inner demons take the first bite, sending Harry tumbling off the wagon yet again and prompting his wife, the long-suffering Rakel, to throw him out. But that's only the beginning. There's a new serial killer in town, but Harry, confined to cold cases, isn't free to track him or to make the case that this killer isn't new at all. Harry's bête noire, Svein Finne, is out of jail (where Harry put him 10 years ago), and, in Harry's mind at least, is on the rampage once more. Yes, but bouts with booze and serial killers are old hat for Harry. So Nesbø delivers a haymaker to Harry's solar plexus that leaves him reeling as he's never reeled before. Want to know more? No, you really don't, at least not now. Focus instead on Harry doing what he does when the darkness descends: finding killers with the kind of intuitive and analytical mind you wouldn't think would still work after all that Jim Beam. But work it does in what may be Nesbø's best storytelling yet. It's not just clever; it's diabolical, and let's be glad it is, because the corkscrewing plot provides a measure of relief from the pain on view in this uncompromisingly intense and brilliant novel.--Bill Ott Copyright 2019 Booklist

Inspector Harry Hole's 12th case is his most grueling to date. And considering his history on and off the Oslo Police (The Thirst, 2017, etc.), that's quite a claim.Back on the bottle since his wife, human rights executive Rakel Fauke, threw him out, Harry wakes up one morning with no idea how he's spent the last two days. Even before he can sober up, he's hit by a tornado: Rakel has been murdered, and Harry's colleagues want him to stay out of the case, first because he's the victim's husband, then because they can't rule him out as her killer. The preliminary evidence points to Svein Finne, whose long career of raping women and later stabbing them to death unless he's gotten them pregnant, hasn't been slowed down just because he's spent 20 years in prison and is now pushing 80. The elusive Finne, the very first killer Harry ever arrested, is driven by the need to avenge his own son's death: "For each son I lose, I shall bring f-five more into the world." Captured after Harry unforgivably uses his latest rape victim as bait, Finne blandly confesses to Rakel's murder, but the unshakable alibi he produces sends the inquiry back to square one. A series of painstaking investigations identifies first one plausible suspect, then another, each one of whom might have been designed specifically to immerse Harry more deeply in his grief. And even after each of these suspects, beginning with Finne, is cleared of complicity in Rakel's death, they continue to hover malignantly over the landscape, ready to swoop down and wreak still further havoc. Long before the final curtain, most readers will have joined Harry, shut out of the official investigation and marginalized in ever more harrowing ways, in abandoning all hope that he can either close the case or enjoy a moment of peace again.The darkest hour yet for a detective who pleads, "The only thing I can do is investigate murders. And drink"and a remarkable example of how to grow a franchise over the hero's most vociferous objections. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the 12th installment of this best-selling series (after The Thirst), Harry Hole's life has sunk to a new low. Assigned to work cold cases for the Oslo police, he's unable to investigate longtime adversary Svein Finne, recently released from prison. Additionally, since separating from his wife, Rakel, he's started drinking heavily again, so he's not too shocked when he wakes up covered in blood with no recollection of the evening before. When he's called about a murder that literally hits close to home, his world is utterly shattered. Harry is forbidden from officially investigating the case, but naturally he finds a way to follow leads and question suspects with the help of his friends. As evidence increasingly points to him, his despair and hopelessness send him into a downward spiral from which he might not emerge. VERDICT Dark, gritty, and clever, this is quintessential NesbØ, a powerhouse of a storyteller. Familiarity with the characters is beneficial, but not required, to appreciate this well-plotted mystery. Series fans will either love or hate this, but either way it's a must-read. [See Prepub Alert, 1/14/19.]--Anitra Gates, Erie Cty. P.L., PA